Putting a gate in front of your content is a battle-tested and somewhat controversial approach to publishing. On one hand, you might be able to generate more quality leads and conversions if you put some kind of gate in front of your content that forces the patient to enter some information about themselves before gaining access to the piece of content. On the other hand, if your form is too annoying or intrusive to your readers, then you will turn them off from your content, and you risk losing them.
If you decide that you do want to gate some of your content, there are a multitude of options to help you do so.
The question of whether or not to gate essentially hinges on the purpose of your physical therapy content. In brief, gating can lead to better relationships with your patients who fill out the forms and hand over their information early in their "research phase". On the other hand, not gating can lead to more downloads and/or views.
Some readers might be less inclined to give away their personal information than others, but more likely to engage with high quality content.
The most common information to request as part of a gate is the reader's email address. This is a stepping stone to a relationship. Developing leads is about building relationships with potential customers. Once a reader hands over their email address, you have the option to begin nurturing them with emails, as one example. You can deliver targeted marketing material directly to people who have demonstrated interest in your practice. But keep in mind that once you ask for more than a name and email address, theres a likelihood your conversion rates will drop.
The sheer volume of additional views from ungated content might be enough to change the story. It all depends on your content and your audience. Typically, blogs and videos and other content developed to draw people to your website should not require a gate. More in-depth pieces of content available for download such as ebooks and white papers should require a form. A good content marketing strategy will include all of these elements.
Content marketing for physical therapy practices is meant to be informational and solidify a particular firm’s industry expertise.
By developing and publishing content, your goal should be to provide information and establish your company as an industry leader. Therefore, people who are interested in your services and content may be more likely to provide their contact information. In fact, 68% of businesses already use landing pages to garner a new sales lead for future conversion, according to MarketingSherpa.
However, you need to make sure that any gated content you provide is valuable and worth the trouble for your patients. Put yourself into the patient's shoes: how much would you need to trust a website and how much would you need to value its content to give away your email address?
Gating content is easier than it has been in the past, thanks to the rise of digital marketing tools from companies like HubSpot. HubSpot has many different tools such as a CRM, SEO organizer, email marketing, forms, and dashboards, but their web design tools make adding landing pages and gates quite easy.
With HubSpot, you can also do some A/B testing to see exactly what the tradeoff between more views and better leads is for your content. Other companies like ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo have similar capabilities. If you are using Wordpress to host your content, there are plugins for that platform that can let you set up gates for content. The marketing giant Salesforce can offer a variety of tools for developing leads from internet content with similar results to the other gating options.
Having a systemic approach to all of your online content will allow you to increase your competitive advantage, increase website traffic and boost sales.
